Dragonlance authors file lawsuit against wizards of the coast -

[Blake Chortles]

Sounds likeWOTC realized they’re on the hook to do these books so its back on.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

This means the authors won right?

 

[Blake Chortles]

This means the authors won right?

Yea. It means wotc gave them enough to drop the suit. Since its without prejudice they can refile at anytime. From the tweet it sounds like the trilogy is back on or some other project that satisfies them.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I've been reading and enjoying the Death Gate cycle so I can't wait for this new trilogy.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Surprised WoTC actually had brain cells. The choice was A. Publish the Books and make boatloads of money or B. Go down in flames for Twitter Ass Pats

I was honestly expecting them to go for option B.

 

[Shroom King]

Dragonlance the tabletop game has one thing unique and awesome to it, and that is the main randomized storyline of the War of the Lance, with the player characters being the heroes (custom or pregenerated). However, what most people like about the setting is the novelization with its set storyline, characters, and epic stakes. So there are several ways to play Dragonlance, and proponents of one may be autistically opposed to the others:

• DL modules as intended, custom characters: fans of Heroes will be pissed they don't get to play their favorites, accusations of valor theft
• DL modules as intended, Heroes: fans of Heroes will be pissed at other players' inauthentic portrayal
• custom scenario set during the War: nothing really matters except the broken column
• custom scenario set after the War: sightseeing tour after the festival
• villain party, defeat the heroes: pissed fans
• villain party, power struggle within the empire: unsatisfying, Spring Dawning will call you a dumbfuck in cleartext.
• knights! excellent idea, too bad D&D's class-based system fucks you over.

From what I understand, the original Dragonlance trilogy was just a retelling of the authors' D&D campaigns in long form. Raistlin was one of the author's player characters in the campaign they were playing at the time.

Creating modules based off novels based off modules used by the authors of said novels when playing their own games seems like a weird recursive form of autism that gives me a headache just thinking about.

 

[Safir]

From what I understand, the original Dragonlance trilogy was just a retelling of the authors' D&D campaigns in long form. Raistlin was one of the author's player characters in the campaign they were playing at the time.

No no no no no. You may be thinking of Ed Greenwood the whizzard.

Dragonlance was a professional project. Tracy Hickman was hired by TSR and pitched a dragon-centered setting to them. Margaret Weis was brought in later to fluff up the literary aspect. The team designed the player characters, plotted the modules and the novel, and playtested them.

The character of Raistlin in the novels was inspired by one of the playtesters' portrayal of Raistlin the pregenerated module character, who was a stock wizard PC named by Harold Johnson (#2 on Project Overlord). Jeff Grubb (#3) and Larry Elmore (the lead artist) are responsible for his appearance, and Weis and Hickman had therefore to come up with a reason. The character of Tasslehoff in the novel is likewise inspired by a playtester of Tasslehoff the stock kender character (no homebody hobbits in a post-apocalyptic world). Tika was outright created by the art team because they wanted a "babe" to paint, and was named after someone's relative who was in turn named after Cosette in Les Mis.

They were not following playtests. As they say in the Annotated Edition (not an exact quote), "When we playtested Despair, the party decided to send Tanis into the well on a rope with the blue crystal staff. Tanis dropped the staff and woke the dragon, who killed him, flew out of the well and killed the rest of the party. It would've been a very short book."

Creating modules based off novels based off modules used by the authors of said novels when playing their own games seems like a weird recursive form of autism that gives me a headache just thinking about.

There's no chain autism. Dragonlance was created as a commercial campaign setting. Running further adventures in it is using it for its intended purpose.

But the popularity of stories has outgrown the game, and even that has faded with time. And it had a flaw, because it was best used for one specific campaign, the linear DL series with pregenerated PCs. (Dragonlance was never intended to be a flagship project. When Lorraine stole TSR from under Gary, she replaced Greyhawk with Forgotten Realms.)

If in 1984 your group would see the ad for a new game in Dragon and decide to play it (one person reads the modules and the others pinky-swear not to), as early as 1985, book fans picking up DL for more specifically Dragonlance kahntent start to outnumber D&D players looking for new adventures, and TSR put a warning to the effect into DL7. The series is not even half done (Dragons of Triumph is DL14) and there are already players flipping tables because another player is playing their waifu or husbando wrong.

So here's the problem: in 2020, when the fields have lain fallow for nearly two decades and with the glut of other kahntent competing for people's attention, the fanbase of Dragonlance consists almost exclusively of autistic superfan revanchists like myself who can rattle off the Canticle of the Dragon if woken at 3 am (just kidding, I am still up at 3 am lol). They won't play well with any invited newbies who are going in blind and don't know "who" they're supposed to be playing ("Oh, I'm a wizard. Cool."), and they won't play well with each other.

 

[SmokeyMcRunFast]

From what I understand, the original Dragonlance trilogy was just a retelling of the authors' D&D campaigns in long form. Raistlin was one of the author's player characters in the campaign they were playing at the time.

Creating modules based off novels based off modules used by the authors of said novels when playing their own games seems like a weird recursive form of autism that gives me a headache just thinking about.

Wait so they are just ripping off Raymond Feist in making their D&D campaign into a book?

Edit: nevermind, @Safir explained it.

 

[draggs]

I'm actually quite curious what this "sensitivity editor" forced them to change. It has been a really long time since I read the original core books, but I remember very little that rose beyond PG-13 in terms of violence and nudity/sex. (Everything always faded to black or cut away the very rare times sex came up.)

I'm sure the problematics were not enough greedy white skinned bigot humans, not enough trans nonbinary goblins of color revenge gang rape scenes with the greedy white skinned bigot humans as the "victims" (just getting what they deserve after all), and not enough communist revolutions by the dwarfs of color proletariat resulting in the revenge gang rape of greedy white skinned bigot humans.

 

[Unpaid Emotional Labourer]

autistic superfan revanchists like myself who can rattle off the Canticle of the Dragon if woken at 3 am

​

 

[Safir]

It has been a really long time since I read the original core books, but I remember very little that rose beyond PG-13 in terms of violence and nudity/sex. (Everything always faded to black or cut away the very rare times sex came up.)

Not that he wouldn't be censored if he wrote it differently, but it's actually Tracy Hickman's preference. He considers onscreen sex scenes unsexy.

and not enough communist revolutions by the dwarfs of color proletariat

Funny that you're saying it, because Weis and Hickman actually wrote a dwarf communist revolution in Death Gate.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Wait so they are just ripping off Raymond Feist in making their D&D campaign into a book?

Edit: nevermind, @Safir explained it.

That's like the majority of D&D fiction.

Funny that you're saying it, because Weis and Hickman actually wrote a dwarf communist revolution in Death Gate.

It was pretty decently written. They did really well at making the typical fantasy races unique compared to other "implementations" of the same races.

 

[Screw Danlon]

condemnations of things like racism and religious zealotry through a fantasy lense

These people don’t understand metaphor. I first realized it during all the screaming about lack of diversity in The Witcher, which also uses fantasy races as a way to explore things like prejudice.

 

[NoFeline]

So if i'm understanding this correctly, WotC was facing public relations problems due to some accusations of cultural insensitivity. In order to make sure future projects would be woke-approved, they inject some fucking weirdo with questionable past writing in the form of misogyny and pedophilia...into a project already run by two women. Did I get that right?

I just looked up what the deal with Nic Kelman's Girls. It's not looking good.

Looking like those soggy knees accusations hold water for once. God DAMN that is impressively bad incel bullshit.

How the fuck is it so easy for pedos to infiltrate wokeshit circles? Seriously these retards have no boundaries and little to no filter-- if the wokes believed in what they say they do the kind of person every pedo is would be immediately ejected

Aaaand we have officially stepped well out of the realm of "it's just toons bro" into actual pedo rhetoric

Another thing about pedophiles is that they want you to think all men have the same pedophillic urges-- and all men are predators deep down, too.

Anybody want my lunch? I don't think I need it anymore